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If you are a small club without much money, struggling to make the sums add up, praying for someone to call and ask for one of your players, it is Chelsea you want to hear from right now.
They have just paid a British record £107million for Enzo Fernandez on the strength of a mere 29 games for Benfica and a part in Argentina’s World Cup winning team, with the first £40m up front.
Well, on the basis of my 18 months as manager of Benfica in the late Nineties, I can say without the remotest doubt that the boy’s limited experience in what the Portuguese call the Primeira Liga tells us very little about whether he will be capable of living up to that price tag or the intensity of the Premier League.
Benfica are the biggest club in Portugal and are simply not confronted every week by the fierce physical challenge Chelsea always get. The team are top by eight points and have lost just once all season. And as for the five games Fernandez started at the World Cup — the history of football is littered with clubs buying players after they have performed well in that tournament and getting it wrong.
You can never have absolute certainly when bringing in a player, whoever he might be. But you don’t want to pay out that kind of money without being as close to certain about him as you can be. He has to have what it takes, physically and mentally, to meet the challenge. Big players need a big ego and a great deal of confidence to get through a high-profile move like that.
Chelsea spent big on Enzo Fernandez despite the player only featuring 29 times for Benfica
I can't quite believe Benfica president Rui Costa (above) got them to splash all that money
I certainly didn’t feel nerves when I drove up to Melwood, Liverpool’s training ground, in my black BMW 3 series in 1978, having become the most expensive player to move between two English clubs.
I’d only had one punch on the nose when Tottenham let me go to Middlesbrough six years earlier for £30,000, which left me determined to prove manager Bill Nicholson wrong. My attitude when I arrived at Liverpool, in a deal worth £352,000, was: ‘What took you so long? Why wasn’t I here a couple of years ago?’
I was in a hurry. I met Liverpool manager Bob Paisley and general secretary Peter Robinson at the Queens Hotel in Leeds and Peter was in the passenger seat when I drove on to Liverpool. I didn’t anticipate the dip at the bottom of the M62 and Peter grabbed on to the dashboard in fear!
In my time managing in Europe, I can never recall a club actually meeting a release clause
I had a confidence bordering on arrogance which didn’t go down well with some of my contemporaries, but it served me well.
Can Fernandez handle the intensity? We don’t know. Can he handle the great big price tag? We don’t know. He is a £40m gamble at best. A young man with potential and little more.
The £107m buyout clause Chelsea have met to buy him means nothing. In Portugal and other European countries, clubs put these ridiculous clauses on players, knowing nobody’s going to meet them.
They are there to protect a club against bigger predators who want their players. They will say it is £150m and will end up settling for £60m. There’s a process of negotiation. The unique thing about this deal is that Chelsea have actually gone and met the entire valuation clause, because they want him right now.
In my experience of managing in Europe, I can honestly say I can never recall a club actually meeting the clause. Benfica will be surprised, if not astonished, that someone has met their fee. I ask
